


Iron Man and Captain America Walk into a Bar (or How Clint Ended Up Teaching History Lessons)

by clear_sight



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Actual serious topics., Clint is everybody's fairy gaymother., History, Humor, LGBTQ Themes, LGBTQ history, Mostly on the history front., No but really. Snark., Snark, Steve is a kid from Brooklyn. 1930s Brooklyn., The occasional misunderstanding because of history., Tony is a terrible New Yorker.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1549508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clear_sight/pseuds/clear_sight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You-" Tony started, pausing to stare at Steve for a moment.  "You grew up in the thirties."<br/>Steve just raised a skeptical eyebrow.  "I grew up in Brooklyn in the thirties."</p>
<p>In which Tony takes Steve to a gay bar purely for the shock value and it ends up backfiring horribly.  'History lessons with Clint' horribly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iron Man and Captain America Walk into a Bar (or How Clint Ended Up Teaching History Lessons)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Ok. So this is what happens when I get interested in things. I was reading a post a tumblr post about where Steve lived in 1930s/40s Brooklyn and how queer the area actually was. And I got to thinking about history and also language - I am a huge nerd and my minor in college was sociolingustics, so I can legitimately spend hours happily researching the origins of slang terms - and started compiling a dictionary of period-accurate slang. And then Orizuru and I started talking about Steve's neighborhood and my dictionary and, well, this is what happens with Orizuru and I have late night discussions. I end up writing things.
> 
> This has ended up almost being less of what I would typically write as a fanfic and more of a "history lesson via snark." Which I hope doesn't scare people off, that description. I have wound up doing a lot of research for this fic and there's a lot I would like to put in here. I do want to warn people, however, that there may be some topics or language that some readers might find objectionable. History. It wasn't warm and fuzzy, especially if you happened to be LGBT*. I can put that in chapter notes, what's going to be in the individual chapters, if that would make people more comfortable. 
> 
> But shutting up now before the note gets to be longer than the chapter. You didn't come here to listen to me babble, you came here to watch Tony Stark make an absolute ass of himself. Which he does beautifully. (First chapter title is at Orizuru's insistence.)

When the car pulled up to the curb and Tony finally pulled his hand away from Steve’s eyes, Steve had no idea where he was.  He was good with directions, so he knew approximately where he was geographically, but given that his mental map of New York was about seventy years out of date, it didn’t precisely help him.  With a long-suffering sigh, he turned to look at Tony.  “Okay, Stark, where are we?”

“Look around you, my friend,” Tony said, showman-like.  He sounded for all the world like Howard sometimes, though Steve would never again dare tell him so.  He had made that mistake once, and once was enough.  In the rearview mirror, the soldier caught a glimpse of Happy rolling his eyes.

Steve remained entirely nonplused.  “We seem to be at a bar, Tony,” he replied dryly.  “I don’t get the big deal.  Why was all the cloak and dagger necessary?”

Tony just shook his head and opened the door, stepping out onto the sidewalk in front of the dark, nondescript building.  “Come on, Capsicle.  We’re going on a little adventure through the modern world.”

Knowing it would be easier to just see for himself, Steve got out of the car without fuss.  He followed Tony’s lead, pulling his hat down to keep himself from being entirely recognizable.  Tony didn’t seem to want the ever-present media vultures to know he was here, so Steve figured he should show the same discretion.  The place seemed innocuous enough, but long experience had taught him looks could be deceiving.  He put it out of his mind as he followed Tony through the doors.

When they got inside, after a surprising non-reaction to Steve’s ID at the door, they were immediately drawn into the crush of bodies.  It was the same stifling heat Steve could remember from going to bars in the middle of summer when he was still a scrawny teenager.  He’d take his sketch pad with him and do portraits of the people there.  As he looked around him, at the riot of color and the exuberance of the crowd, he half wished he had it with him now.  The music was strange to him – a staticy, stiff thing played smoothly over digital systems that contrasted sharply with the popping, crackling recordings of jazz and blues that he had been used to – and the dancing was much more forward, but there was the same air of want and driving energy that he remembered.  More than anything, there was the familiarity of spotting couples in the crowd.  Pairs of men pressed too close to be mistaken for anything but lovers, and Steve wondered what the proper word for it was now. 

Tony dragged him over to the gleaming, black bar and ordered them each a scotch.  Steve could feel the genius’ eyes on him as he watched the crowd.  There were several long moments of silence between them before Tony spoke up, leaning in close to be heard over the music that was loud enough to reverberate in Steve’s chest.  “I was sort of expecting a reaction.  What did I miss?”

The room was so loud that it was only thanks to Steve’s excellent hearing that he caught Tony’s words.  “I just wish I had my sketch pad,” he replied, eyes skimming over the brightly colored men and women around him.  And now that he was looking, there were more than a few pairs of women in the crowd, many of them sporting short-shorn hair and masculine attire that had thrown him at first glance.  Just as many, though, were wrapped in short skirts and low cut shirts, their long hair tied up in ways that would keep them from overheating, their makeup done just so.  They blended and bled into the fray of similarly dressed men, who provided a counterpoint to their more traditionally dressed peers.  All of this, however, seemed to be done predominantly in almost garish colors, everything pressed right up to the border of fashionable and overdone.

“Okay, not the reaction I was expecting,” Tony said.  He waved the bar tender back over for another drink, turning and leaning over the polished surface to give him some sort of instruction, making a vague gesture indicating Steve.  The man behind the bar gave Steve a look of mild interest, more curiosity than anything else, before going to do as he’d been asked. 

A moment later he returned with another scotch and something tall and vibrantly colored that he set next to Steve before he vanished again.  Steve had known revealing to Tony that he was physically incapable of getting drunk was a mistake.  He had no idea what was in that glass and no real inclination to find out.  Tony seemed amused by this, watching him quietly over the rim of his own glass, brown eyes only occasionally straying from Steve to look out over the crowd.  It wasn’t obliviousness, Steve knew that much.  Tony’s posture, relaxed as it was, was still sharp and attentive.  It wouldn’t appear as such to anyone else here, but Steve had trained with him and fought with him and Steve was a soldier.  He knew how it went, watching your back all the time, even when you were pretending you weren’t.  Or even when you weren’t actively thinking about it.

Pulling himself out of his own head, Steve pointed to an area along the far wall where, out past the violently multicolored crowed, there was a rectangular raised platform painted with a white and black checkerboard pattern.  “There’s a stage.  Do they do drag shows here?”

At that Tony nearly choked on his scotch.  Coughing, he set the glass down on the bar and turned back to Steve with a disbelieving expression.  “What?”

And to Tony’s surprise, Steve’s expression fell fractionally.  He actually looked _disappointed_ and perhaps a little ashamed of having asked.  “Oh.  Is that not something people do anymore?”

“What the _hell,_ Rogers?” Tony spluttered, staring at Steve like he’d lost his mind.  Nothing about the evening had gone as expected.  The super-soldier had rolled so well with the punches that he had come out ahead of Tony, and that wasn’t something Tony had counted on at all.

Steve looked over at him and shrugged slightly, his expression unreadable.  “It reminds me a little of where I grew up, that’s all.”

“You –” Tony started, pausing to stare at Steve for a moment.  “You grew up _in the thirties_.”

Steve just raised a skeptical eyebrow.  “I grew up in _Brooklyn_ in the thirties.  On Washington Street, about four blocks from Sands Street.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”  Tony asked.

Steve shrugged.  “Obviously you don’t know your New York history very well.”

Tony spluttered at him, momentarily speechless.  It was evidently a long enough gap in the conversation for someone to take notice of Steve.  A man who was probably in his twenties with, in Tony’s opinion, offensively stupid floppy hair, emerged from the crowed and walked up to Steve, a charming smile firmly in place.

“Hey,” he greeted, and Tony could smell the clumsily attempted seduction a mile away.  My god, he hated kids.  It took him a moment to catch up to that thought and realize that, outside of time spent frozen, Steve was only about twenty six.  He hunched back into his scotch at the thought.  A ninety six year old had no place making him feel like a senior citizen.  The kid – the real one, not the old man posing as one Tony had dragged in with him – was still there, though, and he continued speaking in that saccharine voice.  “You two together?”

Steve shot a look at Tony before shaking his head.  He was here, after all, so there was no point not letting himself have a bit of fun simply because Tony had decided the bar top was more interesting than he was.  It was just a dance.  “No.  Just friends.”

The boy’s smile widened and he held out his hand.  “Good.”

Steve gave one last sidelong glance at Tony, then allowed himself to be drawn out into the crowd.  At the bar, Tony merely sat and stared blankly at the back of Steve’s head.  He was not _nearly_ drunk enough for this.

**Author's Note:**

> Is there anything I got wrong? Anything you'd like to know more about? Anything you'd like to point out? Leave me a comment or send me a message. I honestly do love doing research and LGBT* history is one of my favorite topics to research. LGBT* history and slang, because I didn't learn nearly enough about people like me growing up and I enjoy knowing why we use the terms we use the way we use them. So really, if there's anything I got wrong I would love to know because that gives me an opportunity to learn something new. And if there's anything you'd like to know I can't promise I won't talk you to death, but I really enjoy this topic so it's not an imposition.


End file.
